The first commercially-available diesel motorcycle

The sudden realization after several decades of evidence that the world is drowning in burned fossil fuels has catalyzed a lot of initiatives to reduce consumption and emissions, but few are as tantalizing as the prospect of diesel motorcycles which further enhance the already economical motorcycle to new levels of fuel efficiency and offer astounding torque and drivability. Though we have written about several production motorcycles such as the HDT military-only JP/8 and the Dutch-built Star Twin ThunderStar 1200 TDI diesel motorcycle, none have been available to the public in any quantity until this week’s news that a new diesel motorcycle from Holland has achieved production status and 500 will be built over the next two years. The Track T-800CDI is being produced by E.V.A. Products BV Holland and uses the 800cc three cylinder Daimler Chrysler diesel engine used in the smart fortwo diesel, military UAVs and marine applications, matching it with a CVT, frame, driveshaft, running gear and ECU produced in-house. The engine uses a turbocharged intercooled Commonrail direct injection engine and produces a whopping 150Nm of torque. It comes with three pre-programmed ECU settings enabling it to be switched to run on 100% Pure Plant Oil (such as sunflower oil) or into a highly efficient but lower power diesel economy mode. E.V.A. CEO Erik Vegt describes the bike as a “BMW GS killer with KTM LC8 drivability and Suzuki Hayabusa-like torque.” “It’s the ultimate long distance and long life motorcycle that can run on diesel fuel or 100% pure plant oil,” says Vegt.

“This week we sold 15 bikes and production is on its way for the first 250 to 500 units that will be sold within the next 2 years. Unfortunately, requests on this bike will probably exceed the production level for some time to come as we have received more than 2000 purchase requests already,” Vegt told Gizmag. “For now we will only target the EU market, but we have already appointed a U.S. distributor which will be announced in 2007.”

“The project has taken more than two years to develop to this point.”